I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Keeping Your Home Safe From Burglars and the Boogey-Man

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosureBy Mavis Butterfield on July 12, 2016 · 6 Comments

With all of the summer travel peeps do, it’s prime pickin’ for burglars. Keeping your home on lock-down while you are out enjoying the long days and warm nights doesn’t have to be a full-scale security system complete with bodyguards–being conscientious about just a few easy safe-guarding elements usually does enough to deter petty criminals.

I personally feel like my house has a maximum security rating at this point. So, go out and move into a neighborhood with an HOA and busybodies who stream by your house 50 million times a day. Trust me, they see EVERYTHING. It’s like having a personal security company at your disposal.

If you can’t stand the idea of YOUR EVERY MOVE being under a microscope, you can try a few other little tricks. First, don’t leave your garage open. Not only does it display your wares for anyone casing the joint {I have wanted an excuse to type “casing the joint” for a long time}, but it also is a pretty easily forgotten entry point for burglars. You start making dinner, head out back to do some gardening, and before you know it, you are headed to bed, forgetting all about the garage being open. So, just be hyper-vigilant about keeping it closed most of the time, so that accidentally leaving it open is a non-issue.

I get the HOA thing is a pain most of the time, but still, just keeping your eyes open for neighbors is pretty rad. If they do the same, then anything suspicious gets shut down pretty quickly. You don’t have to have them over for dinner, or hang out with them at the mall…but exchange cell phone numbers and butter them up with cookies, so that they can and will contact you if they see something weird.

If you are headed out of town for a bit, make it look like you still live in the place. Leave a living room light on. I know some people who even leave a television on instead. It provides noise and light. A completely darkened house screams empty, so make it look lived in. Timers for outdoor and indoor lights are pretty inexpensive and work great for this exact purpose.

In Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation fashion, embrace exterior lighting. Install motion sensor lights. The boogey-man in particular does not want to be lit up as he is trying to sneak up your home. It’s a pretty cheap investment overall, but it will also alert neighbors to anyone approaching your house at night.

Make sure to stop mail and paper delivery or have someone pick it up everyday. Newspapers piled up says one of two things: you have fallen and you can’t get up or your are out of town. Either way, someone might take that as an invitation to come on in, so clear it out, and keep them off your doorstep.

If you are having strangers into your home–say a home improvement project, cable installation, selling something on craigslist…whatever, make sure you don’t have your valuables on display like a museum. Most service workers are honest, hard-working peeps, don’t get me wrong, but you read about situations where people case homes all of the time while they were “doing work” in their homes. It’s best just to make them think you have nothing nice.

Finally, you could go the standard, but more expensive route and install a home security system. It really just depends on what type of investment you are looking to make…or protect.

I’m totally digging how you worked in both “boogey man” and “casing the joint” there. Nice. Good tips, plus I’m sure a quality canine like Lucy doesn’t let too much get by her, either. Dogs make good alarms.

I sometimes forget to lock the door at night…
But I do have the neighbours number so I can call him when his cows get into the wrong paddock
When I hear footsteps on the veranda it turns out to be heavy footed possums!
I don’t like having our garage open either – its not connected to the house but I agree you don’t want to put everything you have in there on display!
We do have security lights, but they are mostly used so I don’t fall over when I have to go outside at night!
Its nice living in the country!

HOAs are like the upscale version of Neighborhood Watch (without the signs because the HOA would never allow signs to be posted– it would deflate property values). We have an HOA, too, so I totally get the “nosy neighbor” angle!